Book Review: Funny in Farsi

So while searching for books to use for a World Lit class I'm teaching this year, a college friend suggested Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas. Lucky for me, Random House was offering this books as a free download right then, so I got to read it right away. I absolutely loved it.

Funny in Farsi begins when seven-year-old Dumas and her family move from Iran to California. Dumas becomes the cultural and language translator for her parents, as she quickly learns English, and spends the next several years balancing between being American and being Iranian. With humor, Dumas addresses some serious topics: the Iranian hostage crisis, the difficulty of language and cultural barrier, religion, food, and more.

I loved Dumas's voice. She is funny and down-to-earth, but beneath her witticisms there is an obvious ache at the hardships of being an Iranian in America. Having read Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis earlier this year, I enjoyed reading a totally different perspective on growing up Iranian. What is barely spoken of in Funny in Farsi is presently starkly in Persepolis. Dumas expresses herself through humor, while Satrapi works through her grim drawings.

I read that ABC is going to be shooting a pilot for Funny in Farsi, and I will definitely try to catch that. Television may ruin the whole thing, of course, but I will definitely be reading her new memoir, Laughing Without an Accent.

The Sunday Salon: Big Thick Book

I was a bit mortified to realize that I haven't reviewed a book in nearly three weeks. I've been having an odd reading summer since I've been concentrating on re-reading classics or reading them anew. For the past week I've been immersed in an unabridged version of The Count of Monte Cristo. Again, this is one of those books that I can't believe, in all my years of literature courses, that I've never read. I don't remember it ever even being on a reading list! But one of my friends says this is her favorite book and another suggested I have my World Lit students read it, so I finally ordered it.

Now I'm having a hard time putting it down. I am only 200 pages into this 1200-page book, and I was wrapped up in the story from the first page. I need to get some serious reading time in, more than just 30 minutes before falling asleep each night, or I'll be reading this until December!

But today promises to be a gray, rainy day—exactly the kind of day for reading a big, thick book after church. If only I can stay awake.

Book Review: People of the Book

Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders was on my Top 10 list from last year. Absolutely fantastic. She won the Pulitzer with March, which I've not read yet, and she is going strong with her newest, People of the Book.

The novel follows the trail of a 500-year-old Sarajevo Haggadah, going backwards on its journey from wartorn Sarajevo to its creation, in the 1400s. Each section tells the tale of that century's holder of the Haggadah, people of various faiths who risked their reputations and lives to save the precious book from wars, book burnings, and neglect. Each of those sections was interspersed with the story of Hanna, a rare-book expert who is commissioned to restore the manuscript.

Brooks is a superb writer, and the story was fascinating. Each section is a world of its own, and the reader is easily transported to that time period and caught up in that character's story. And with each section, I was left wishing I could read a whole novel about that particular story. I wasn't nearly as entranced by Hanna's contemporary story as I was by the other sections, but it worked well as a whole.

I should have read this book faster, as I did keep losing track of whose story was being told. That has nothing to do with Brooks' writing but a suggestion that you might want to have a clear head when reading this book (i.e., my before-bed reading time did not do this book justice). My only niggling complaint with this book is that its style closely mimics The Girl in Hyacinth Blue (my review here), a lovely novel by Susan Vreeland. The style is so similar that I at first felt gypped, like, "Hey, I've already been here before!" I realize that this is probably a fairly common novel technique (although as a voracious reader, I have to say I've only encountered it in these two novels and in Hitty: Her First Hundred Years) but somehow it bugged me that Brooks used the same pattern as Vreeland. Silly, I know.

Ignore my one little peeve, and read the book.

Sunday Scribblings: Toys

I.

"The Living Doll": It was without a doubt the scariest episode of The Twilight Zone. Talking Tina haunted my childhood in an I-love-to-be-scared kind of way. "My name is Talking Tina, and I'm going to KILL YOU!" my friends and I would shriek and collapse in the curious, delightful mix of hilarity and terror.

II.

My mother says I cried and hid when my grandmother brought me, age 2, the life-sized doll I later named Maria. I don't remember ever being afraid of Maria; I suppose I quickly grew taller than she. Maria was soon joined by a nearly bald baby doll, whom I named Betty Ann after the teenage neighbor who handed down her baby doll to me. And there was always Thumbelina, with the sweet, slightly dirty face and yellow hair.

Decades later my daughter finds Maria and Betty Ann in my mother's attic and brings them home. I dream of Maria that first night. She is life-size—taller than I am—and dancing stiffly. She holds her arms straight out, demanding that I join her dance. I wake up, a scream caught in my throat and heart pounding.

III.

The Japanese doll gave me nightmares. A visiting professor brought her as a gift for me. Beneath her red kimono she was just a purple plastic cross, and her head popped off too easily off its stick neck. But it was her white face that terrified me, and the way her head rolled under the bed so alive. Sleeping, knowing that white head was under my bed, was impossible. But to get out of bed and find her was even more terrifying. She trapped me for a whole night. In the morning my brother fetched her head and stuck it on his finger, chasing me over shining hardwood floors, his socks skating and tiny teeth so white and clean.

More thoughts on "Toys" here at Sunday Scribblings.

Book Review: Made in the U.S.A.

I was excited about reading this latest book by Billie Letts. I remember enjoying her Where the Heart Is, although it's been many years since I read it.

Honestly, I thought this novel was a disaster. Everything about it felt contrived; in fact, everything about it felt like it was written to be made into a Hallmark movie. Maybe it was.

Two kids whose guardian dies (of a heart attack in Walmart) go off to Las Vegas to search for their long-lost Dad. Dad, of course, ends up dead, so the 15 and 11 year old siblings have to fend for themselves on the streets of Las Vegas. Within a short amount of time, predictably, the girl poses for porno magazines and becomes a coke addict. What a surprise! Not only was the storyline predicable, but the whole porno episodes were handled much too graphically. I don't really have any desire to read lurid details about a young girl's experiences as a porn star. Seriously. It totally did not fit into this "feel good" book.

The Las Vegas scenes go on and on, and then enter another homeless guy with a strange Mexican accent, who brings the kids to his long-lost family of circus performers. (Strangely, none of them have Mexican accents. Yes, it's sort of explained but it was so lame.) The girl, of course, turns out to be a world-class aeralist. Seriously.

The writing was choppy. The characters were flat. The dialog was dreadful. Does anyone really start their sentences with "Say, …"

Say, I bet you can find something better to read than this. Please do.

The Sunday Salon: Reading, Just One of My Father's Legacies

My childhood was rich in the cadence of words, both written and heard. There was always the sound of my father's voice telling stories, and the image of my father in the middle of everything, quietly reading a book.

My family had books everywhere. Bookshelves lined our den and bedrooms, corner shelves were stacked full with books in the living room and dining room, and books crept onto the polished tops of coffee and end tables. My father never used bookmarks or even turned down the corners of pages; he was—and still is—a spine-breaker. He left his trail face-down, books sprawled out on surfaces, waiting to be picked up again, their spines permanently arched and cracking.

My father could be alone in a house full of us. The bustle of the family could hum all around him while he sat, cross-legged, rubbing the corner of a page between thumb and forefinger. "Jim," my mother would say for the fourteenth time, and he'd look up, eyes mystified and foggy under his black-rimmed glasses. Any true reader knows that to swim to the surface and bob up into reality can be disorienting.

My father has never been a monogamous reader. He splits his time between his bedroom novel, his coffee table magazines, his scientific journals, his biblical texts, and whatever anyone else is reading. He reads every book my mother brings home from the library and cannot be in my house for 10 minutes without visiting the nearest bookshelf and pulling out a book. He's easy to find and predictable, there on the green couch with his legs crossed and his thumb and forefinger doing their page rubbing.

But my father has never been stingy with his love of reading. The earliest recording of my voice is me at about age three with my father. "What do you want me to read?" he asks in his gentle Southern Illinois drawl, like the rolling hills of an orchard. I answer back in the same accent, "Just any ol' thing, Daddy." Though my mother was my daytime reader, my father read to us each evening from the big white Pearl S. Buck story Bible.

After supper and on long car trips, he was a storyteller. He knew how—still does know how— to tell a story. He knew all about character development, plot, climax, conflict, and denouement, and he used those devices with skillful ease. He is a master storyteller, rich in language and suspense.

A passion for reading is certainly not the only gift my father has given to me, but it is perhaps the one that links my life so solidly to his. This we share more deeply than our delight in the perfect sail or a slice of the sweetest peach: a passion for words, both written and spoken, for the sound of language and the joy of a well-turned phrase, and for sheer delight of a perfectly good book.

Sunday Scribbling: Vision

Daydream

There was a vision he had once:
a grassy hill
me laying back in a white sundress
him resting his head on my stomach,
both of us facing upwards, eyes closed
hot sun pouring down,
blessing us.

Or was it a field of crimson and yellow
leaves sprinkled on grass,
me in jeans and a white t-shirt
resting my head on his thighs,
the late October sun
casting weak shadows?

We are steeped in shared memories,
long ago visions come true
more than we can count
and never enough,
cool mountains framing
our lives.

More scribblings on "vision" here at Sunday Scribblings.